Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made clear his company's obsession with speedy browsing as he launched new versions of the Kindle Fire (the best-selling item on Amazon), Kindle, and a new e-reader called the Kindle Paperwhite. Within the new hardware lies the key to the Amazon devices' success: the rapidity with which to make internet commerce second nature—as if it's an automatic background task, not an actual purchasing decision.

Nowhere is that strategy clearer than in Amazon's Fire line of tablets, which, after this afternoon's new product announcement, now includes two options: HD or standard resolution. The Kindle Fire HD—with 40 percent more memory bandwidth than its forebear, 1920x1200 resolution, and a 8.9-inch screen—costs $299 for the Wi-Fi-only version and $499 for the 4G LTE version.

Like its smaller SD sibling (7-inch screen, $159), the Fire HD adds a feature called X-Ray search. It allows you to click on an actor in a movie and find out more on IMDB, or purchase real-life products from within games. On the Fire HD, that can all happen faster than before; the tablet has two 2.4-GHz antennas to make use of MIMO (multiple in, multiple out Wi-Fi technology) for a total of 5 GHz.

Syncing also becomes faster and more innate in the way the new Fires automatically sync games (never lose a level!), books, and audiobooks. According to Bezos, reading and listening to the same book helps people remember it. He calls the combination "immersion reading" and says that, with Amazon's new Whispersync for Voice, you can "listen to professional narration while you read." Implicit in that statement is the suggestion that only professional, nuanced narration—not auto-pulling audio from the text file or, heaven forbid, reading the narration straight from the text, in silence, sans "professional" interpretation—will do. For Bezos and Amazon, quality reading occurs through Kindle products, not books.

As for writing, that can now happen through Kindle Direct Publishing, a service that lets writers skip those (pesky, according to Bezos) agents and publishers and go directly to market in a matter of hours. Of course, there is still a publisher—Amazon—and that publisher wants to expand. Hence, we have Kindle Serials, a new way to release installments of books. Or, as Amazon puts it: "Buy once, receive all future episodes." And so the Fire continues to narrow the gap between reading and watching, media and commerce—and hopes you'll consume everything through its store.

Let us not forget ordinary reading: Bezos also announced a pretty cool new dedicated e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite. Though unfortunately named (say it three times fast and try not to say "paperweight"), the $119 device ($179 for a 3G version) is pretty ideal for an e-reader. By sandwiching capacitive touch abilities between the display and the light, Amazon reduced the air gaps that can create glare while boosting contrast by 25 percent. To take advantage of its 212 PPI (62 percent more pixels than old Kindles) Amazon added new typefaces and visualization for the X-Ray search feature.

Time to market is the main area in which Amazon still struggles with speed. Though the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD will be available September 14, you'll have to wait until October 1 for the two Paperwhite devices and till November 20 for the tablet with the longest name, the Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE.

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